The official blog of OpenTrainTimes

Main menu

Monthly Archives: December 2015

Christmas is a time for relaxation for some, but not everyone wants to spend their entire day drinking wine and eating mince pies. However, I seem to have been able to combine both, and I’ve spent the holiday season working on a load more tweaks and improvements to the site.

Today’s update was due yesterday, but our service provider, Linode have been hit by DDoS attacks, which meant that OpenTrainTimes appeared to be down. If these attacks continue to happen, I’ll look at moving the OpenTrainTimes infratsructure elsehwere, possibly on to multiple servers on different providers.

On to more positive news – Linode appears to be stable again, so I’ve seized the opportunity to release the code I’ve been working on over the past week or two.

It’s been two months of silence – or so it seems. Busy working in the background has been yours truly, working on some massive behind-the-scenes updates to the site to optimise it and make it faster.

The biggest change you’ll see is that maps load faster. A lot faster. The previously bulky (sometimes several megabytes) maps are now a few hundred kilobytes, meaning that if you’re using them on a mobile device, you’ll really notice the difference.

Next, a much-requested feature – inter-map links. Between maps, you’ll see that some labels, such as “To/From London Euston”, are now clickable and have a coloured border. Clicking one of these will take you to the adjacent map. Right now, it’ll just load the map and you’ll have to find the right part yourself – but in the coming weeks, the map will take you exactly to the right place.

Another new feature – every location in blue on the maps can now be clicked and will take you to the timetable for that particular location. Neat, huh?

The rest of the changes are under the hood – some maps have been tidied up, others have been extended slightly, and most of the foundation for the next year’s worth of updates to OpenTrainTimes is in there and ready.